Well, my last proper post was apparently pre-IKEA, over a month ago now. I have been very, very busy since then, hence lack of postage. So far mine and Andy’s evenings look like this:

Monday – radio
Tuesday – nothing
Wednesday - is sometimes taken up by either BUNIX or DLUG
Thursday – Role-play
Friday – Role-play
Saturday – Role-play [sometimes]
Sunday – sometimes have dinner at my parents

To say nothing of the days. I do get 3 days off a week now, but they always seem to be spent doing chores. Every since we got the IKEA Shelves the house has been truly a mess, and I’ve managed to do piecemeal amounts of tidying, but finally on Thursday I got it all sorted. I even managed to make the spare room presentable.

Work has been pretty hectic as well; Promo, promo, sale, promo, sale. We’ve just put another sale live, and we have an audit starting Monday.

I’ve also got a new phone – the HTC Dream, AKA T-Mobile G1, that I’m loving to bits. In fact all those pics I’ve linked to up there were taken with the phone, sent to the web using PixlePipe, and then, in the last one’s case at least, forwarded to photobucket. It is making life so much easier, though in some cases it means I blog less, because I use Pixlepipe to post to Twitter and Jaiku micro-blog sites.

Humm, what else have I been doing?

For the past week or so I’ve been ill – cough that turned into a chest infection – and I lost my voice, making work even harder than it had to be [oh and now Andy’s caught it, poor thing].

As a result of that, I’ve been trying to get healthy again [it kind of dropped off over the past month because we were so busy]. I’ve gone back to eating things that are passably good for me, and I’ve decided it’s easier to be healthy the rest of the week, and be unhealthy only on Thursday during role-play. So my average day now consists of:

Breakfast:
1 portion of fruit, 1 cereal bar, tea or coffee 1 sugar

Mid morning:
tea or squash, 1 cereal bar

Lunch:
3 portions of fruit [1 actual item of fruit, 250ml of Innocent smoothie], Sushi, 2 drinks [either tea or squash], 50g of cashew nuts when I’m really hungry

Mid afternoon:
tea or squash, 1 cereal bar

Dinner
Nothing set, but mostly things like stew, spag bog, stir fry etc

I don’t know, but I would like to think this is fairly healthy.

I haven’t really taken up any new past-times, or even gone much back into old ones, but I am writing a lot more on Protagonize. So my ‘thing a month’ has kind of gone out the window, and I would aim to take it up again, but I have a hell od a lot of holidays coming up.

July 10-13 I’m going to a medival re-enacters fair, July 20-26 up to Yorkshire to see Bytey, August 13-16 is Fairport’s Cropready Convention, October23-25 is LUG Radio Live and finally March 1-7 2010 is Daytona Bike week in Florida.

So I’m pretty certain that’s all I’ve been up to lately [and will be upto], and if you read through all that you’re a star

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/29/usa-canada-and-the-e.html

The jist of this is that a bunch of rich countries are trying to stop the blind and linguisticly disabled from being able to have access to books and the written word through copyright legalise. I say this is just about the wrongest and most retarded thing I’ve ever heard of and it needs to be stopped.

Please, if you give any kind of damn about a fellow human, pass the word on and tell these asshole publishes to fuck the hell off!

I love Ikea, don’t get me wrong. I think the whole premiss behind it is fantastic, and I love going and wandering around the show rooms and imagining the vast possibilities and How I Can Make Them Work For Me™.

Now, Dark and I have needed a media storage solution for… well, since we moved out of home 3 years ago. Between us we’ve got over 600 books, 200 music CDs, probably about the same for DVDs and console games, and too many media CDs to count. Back last summer we contacted a guy to make us a bespoke media solution, but that hasn’t panned out so we decided, in our apparent naivety, that we’d use an Ikea solution.

Oh dear gods was that a mistake. I have spent the better part of today, armed with pencil, ruler and graph paper trying to make us a solution. My head is numb from the sheer mind blowing number of possible combinations that we can fit on the one wall I was concentrating. Please remember this isn’t counting the rest of the room. I feel like gibbering in a corner somewhere.

But you know what the best part is? I’m not finished!!!! So I get to do this all over again tomorrow!!!!

Oh, and my ruler isn’t straight.

Guh *headdesk*

Yay, I’ve finally finished committing all the edits I made to the MOW files Novel. There are two particularly difficult scenes I’ve got left to re-work, and, uh, most of the end to rewrite, but hopefully I’ll have all that done soon so I can submit it to createspace and get a free paperback proof copy of the novel. It’s just marginally unfortunate I don’t feel especially inspired to do them right now… Ah well, procrastination and perseverance will win the day.

In other news! I’ve been getting back into the Redwall books, they’re fantastic. Makes me more than ever want to try my hand again with Andy. We’re also edging closer to getting our thankyou’s sent out, and our media system sorted. We’ve decided to send a bunch of signed photos and have a play with some stuff from Ikea.

Hopefully as well, along with all that I’ll take a look at some GMing stuff online with a view to running that long promised RPG. Still haven’t decided if I want to set it in Stone of Tides or space.

Oh and in other, other news I should be finding out in three days if I’ve got my NVQ

Well, I noticed it’s been over a month since I last posted. Frankly though things haven’t really changed that much in terms of what’s going on in my life. If anything things have gotten a little worse, in that it’s been over a week since I last did any exercise on the wii fit and the diet-ness has taken a long walk off a short pier Motivation and organisation at still major suckage, but at least I’ve only got one more case study to do before my folder is sent off to be verified that I’ve finished my apprenticeship. The radio show is still fine, except that someone forgot to pay the domain bills for GRN, so our site now advertises a bunch of crap.

In other news, Kelly’s wedding was nice. On the way back from it Owen, Sarah and and I went to Ikea to look at their custom furniture storage solutions. I find Ikea unduly exciting, and walking around imagining having all our media finally sorted and stored accessibly and appropriately was thrilling. I get excited at the weirdest things… Of course though, that and the sudden surge of money I suddenly realised I have, I went out and bought more books, DVDs and CDs.

I’ve picked back up on the MOW files novel. I found out that I only have until the end of may to finish my edits and submit it to CreateSpace for a free proof copy of my novel. I’m about halfway through the edits that I already set out, but only just starting on the re-write of the end section. I don’t know whether I’ll finish on time, but with the NVQ out of the way it’ll probably make things easier. Oh and talking of writing, I’ve recently gone back to Protagonise. Andy and I published The Stone of Tides, no one has commented on it yet, or given any thoughts as to how we end the thing, but I know people are reading it, and I appreciate it’s very long [I got to 50k words, and Andy got to 25k, so that’s about 75,000 words and it’s not finished].

And then with both NVQ done, and hopefully the MOW novel out of the way I can maybe get back to my thing a month promises. In June, perhaps I will try and and run that Stone of Tides campaign I was thinking of, or some kind of space adventure [we haven’t done anything futuristic in a while]

So of got lots of stuff I’d like to do, and plenty to keep me busy. The only thing that concerns me slightly lately is, when I got made supervisor [properly now, with the correct pay and all], Jenny the Assit. Manager, asked me if I had any goals or thoughs as to where I might be in a year or five, and I honestly couldn’t think of any. I mean, yes I still kinda want to run my own business, but lets be realistic here - it’s kind of a pipe dream. What’s bugging me is that I have no real drive or ambition to do anything more with my life. I never wanted to be one of those people who reached a point they were comfortable with and then just stopped. I always wanted to be someone special or important, and well, that one didn’t really work out, but either way it looks a lot like I have just reached a point and stopped and I hate myself for being like that. I don’t want to just sit still now, but I have no idea how to carry on moving forward and bettering myself, or my lot, especially considering how old I ma now - I kinda feel like most of life has just passed me buy. In that regard at least, everything sucks and I’m confused and annoyed.

Oh well, I guess that’s extra drivel for another day’s rant.

The other day, as Dark and I were walking to work, he spotted a sign in game station for a reconditioned Wii and a new Wii Fit all for £175. I ummed and ahhed about it for the week, because I thought it might be a smart idea to get Dark and I excersing more [I’d already decided to change my diet], and last staurday went and bought the damn thing.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying using it, I think it’s going to do Dark and I the world of good. BUT good god damn, do I hurt. Like the man said it’s making us both realise how unfit we’ve gotten. The things I’ve been doing most are the yoga stretches, some of the muscle workouts and the jogging, and it’s showing: my calves and side muscles ache like crazy, and every cough is painfully brought home to me. But I think the pain is good for two reasons. First, all this exercise must be working or it wouldn’t hurt so much… right? Second is that it’s made me notice how often I cough. This was also brought home to me on monday night, when one of our regular listeners informed me that I have been this bad for three weeks, no simple cold should last that long and he ordered me to the doctors…

Which leads me to the next part of my health ramble… I’m gonna try really hard to cut out all the bad shit I’ve been eating lately - no ice cream, chocolate, bread, cheese, eggs or take out for me any more. I’m also going to moderate my soda drinking, and replace with Innocent Smoothies. So that means getting up early every morning to do half an hour on the Wii, and getting in early for work so I can buy a sushi pack on the way in. Still not sure what I’m gonna do about breakfast because I’m not convinced that I should be using LactoFree milk every morning. I think a yoghurt pot is okay maybe a few days, with a cereal bar and some fruit, but that doesn’t completely fix the issue. Maybe I’ll see if I can still get an appointment with the dietician and see what they can recommend.

I think that’s all my heath related news for now. In the rest of my life: Work is stress, novel editing has stalled, almost finished NVQ, house is a tip - might be getting a maid, social life a disorganised mess, G3 radio show beginning to be a success, thing-a-month for April probably not gonna happen.

There are never enough hours in the day and I have 0 motivation most of the time, but I think it’s directly related to my crappy diet, so the sooner I get that fixed the better.

Argh, I have blank page syndrome. I was going to tell all about Dark and my little holiday last weekend, how I feel tired all that time and it sucks and I half hate mu job and how NaNoEdMo is kinda going alrightish - I wont win, but at least I might still get something spiffy out of it. But I find I have not much else so say beyond that. Every attempt at something slightly more detailed sounds silly to my mind. I guess that might do - I just thought since I hadn’t written in a while and update might be in order, and I suppose since that all that’s really going on in my life right now, it shall suffice.

I’m 6 days in, and I haven’t touched my manuscript. That means I have 12 hours of editing to make up. Eep..

I though I’d take a look back at what my goals where and see how I’d got on.

January’s goal was to have made one vidcast and published it. This hasn’t exactly happened, but the G³ show has been doing very well. Last week we reached almost 30 unique listeners, we have a name, an intro, an e-mail address [g3show[at]gamingradio.com] and we should soon have a website. And one of our listeners made us this:

Thanks Blobbin!
I chalk this one up as an off kilter WIN.

February’s goal was to take 5 lessons on the violin. Well February was a little rushed for me, so I swapped that out to make book marks instead, and… I used about 50 pages, rather than the full 100, and I haven’t cut them all out so I think that’s looking like a fail.

March is supposed to be NaNoEdMo: 50 hours of editing time for The MOW Files. It’s 6 days in, and I haven’t touched it. Though I have had a bunch of other Homework for my NVQ to do, so… We’ll see how this one goes.

In other news, by external even was a success: we took more more money than any one else in our area, and they were also more successful than any previous external sales our store has run.

Laundry, washed—– Check
Laundry, folded—– Check
Washing up———- Check
VT Case study——- Check
VT Learner report— Check
Prep for radio show- Check
Trash taken out—– Check
Prep for NaNoEdMo— Check
Event e-mails sent– Check
VT Application of number– Ah…

Curse you chores, for not being numerous enough to allow me to avoid doing this one piece of work Oh, wait, I think the toilet may need cleaning…

I’ve got three more

This is becoming a little bit of an obsession…

In other news I’ve bookmarked the most accessible books in the collection, and last night I managed to use Andy’s phone to collect data on the newest ones [also, the most accessible ones]. We really need to get around to finding out how Jim’s getting on with making our bookcases because it’s starting to get a little desperate in there…

So, as I mentioned in my last post GeekHappyFunTime has been replaced with a geek radio cast from GRN. We’ve got another show tonight so I hope you tune in!

In other news, I think, because I’ve been so busy the past couple of weeks, February is going to be ‘A Bookmark for Every Book’ month. I went and bought some printer card and a guillotine last Thursday and using the ten bookmarks I have made, I’m intending to print off enough so that all 600 [approx.] of our books can have a bookmark. There are roughly 7 bookmarks to a page, and I have 100 sheets of card, so hopefully that will be enough, and to cover an future additions to our collection. I’m also going to dedicate any free time I have when Andy’s phone is around to cataloging said collection. The app on his phone isn’t the best as it uses the amazon library rather than the ISBN library, but it very quick to add it to the database.

Well, I promised to update more, and so far, I haven’t been that good at it, but here goes.

Work is going okay despite everything, I feel more positive about everything. I’m not sure why, but I attribute it to Darren, a supervisor borrowed from another store. weird thing is, even though I got on okay with him, he annoyed me no end, and for some reason it made me feel a lot better. Maybe also talking to someone with a little more authority than me about my colleagues made me feel better - got things off my chest without hurting any of them.

So what else have I not/ been doing?

Happy Fun Geek Time: As I mentioned before we’d got a different offer, and our first show went okay. I had a list of things Andy and I brainstormed that we wanted to talk about for HFGT. We had planned those to be between 30 min and a hour, and we covered just about everything on the list. Good that we talked about it, bad that we now have nothing for next week… Anyway The Locian Show with Dark and Dru is on, hopefully, every Monday and you can catch us at 1900h onwards at Total Gaming Radio or Lorcian’s own page. They have an IRC channel too so you can distract us while we’re talking

Violin/ Fiddle: In my ‘thing a month’ post I said I was going to aim to make February the time I picked up my violin again, and perfected ‘Mary had a little lamb’. It’s 12 days into feb, and I haven’t done anything with the damn thing except look at it. It’s not that I don’t want to play it, I just keep finding tonnes of other things that crop up instead and get in the way.

I also said I would try and write some more, particularly on Protagonize, but that hasn’t really be going any where. I have three days left to take off so I’m going to take them in the middle or march so Andy and I can have some time together, but I’m also going to try and use it to stick to NaNoEdMO I really want to get the MOW files finished and semi-polished, at least enough to show my parents… And I shall defiantly try to encourage Andy to finish The Stone of Tides. I do wish though that it was a better looking site…

Anyway, it’s getting on in the day [I’ve spend two hours showering and pissing about on the net] it’s time I did some house work, and all the other odd jobs that need to be done.

Once again all images courtesy of the Open Clip Art Library.

Well, it looks like this is going to be put on hold for a while, sort of. We got a different offer.

One of our old house mates [Lorcian on their forums] use to do have a slot on something called Booty Island Radio, that was run by Gaming radio Network. I don’t know if he still does that, but apparently he was asked to do a geek radio show by them [I think, I was kinda hazy on the details], and he asked Andy and I if we’d like to help. We said yes [obviously] as not only does he have all the kit, but it’ll give us a better idea of how everything works and perhaps when we finally do the vidcast we’ll actually know what the hell we’re doing.

I’ll post further details soonest, but basically I think our slot will be mondays 0800-1000 ish, so keep an eye out

Dom from Megatokyo is famous for not posting anything up on the megatokyo blog very often. I tell you this because [this month excepted] I’ve noticed that my posting rate has slipped from at least once a week to once a month, and if Dom can post at least every two weeks I’m kinda feeling ashamed that I, with probably way less to do than he, can’t manage to find the time.

My excuses for this have varied from: ‘I’m too busy’ to ‘I have nothing to write about’, but I know that neither of them are exactly true. Even Lady S manages to post every week. Even if she thinks she hasn’t done anything especially noteworthy, she always manages to pick something interesting to write about. And I know that is true for me as well. Gods knows I have no way really of tell who reads this [all the XML feeds my stats package picks up are generic ones: Sage on Firefox, Google Reader etc] but I’m sure that something I find dull might be interesting to some one who’s geographical location doesn’t do that sort of thing. I mean it’s always nice to know that what you say is being appreciated by someone someplace that you don’t know [hint: comment! ] but it’s not an absolute necessity I suppose.

Maybe it depends on why you blog: if you blog for yourself - to record thoughts and events diary style, or if you blog to let the world at large know you’re alive and having fun, or if you want to get rich from a newspaper style opinion column. I don’t really know why I blog. I think at first it was because I mistakenly believed that the whole world wanted to know about the dull mundane stuff I did. Now I’m older it’s more like, I want to have a place to record what I think for myself [maybe for any future kid I begat], and I do have the small knowledge that there are a few people out there who like to keep up with that I’m doing [people I met once or twice at places like LUGL].

So armed with the knowledge of a small audience, and the wisdom to now not write about insignificant things, I pledge to write in this thing more often, and to also to do more blog-worthy things. I don’t know if this will stick, but I’ll try my best

I’m not exactly making any ‘resolutions’ per se this year, but I do have a bunch of things I’d like to focus on this year, things I want to turn from ’someday’ to ‘today’ following the the NaNoWriMo ‘Big, Fun, Scary Adventure’ idea. I thought I’d try and do one thing a month, so here is my list so I don’t forget.

Jan: Geek, Happy, Fun Time vidcast. Goal - to have at least one completed vidcast and have it up on the website.

Feb: Violin/ Fiddle. Goal - to have taken at least 5 lessons and become less than a complete newbie at it.

March: National Editing Month. Goal - to have a finished second draft of The MOW Files that I possibly wouldn’t mind showing to my parents.

April: Run DnD game. Goal - to run a DnD game with barely any flaws, one session a week for the whole month.

ADDON: May: Use MyCollection application on the G1 to catalog our media. Goal: To have done at least half the books by the end of the month.

Nov: NaNoWriMo. Goal - this one should be obvious…

Err, that’s as far as I’d though so far… But I’m sure I’ll think up something else.

Venomous mammal. I can’t help thinking though, it looks like one of the little toves that run around in the scene from Alice through the looking lass where Humpty Dumpty is telling her a poem…

I mentioned way back when that Andy and I were thinking of starting our own podcast to fill in the gap left by LUG Radio, only we more general geekyness and puppets. Well since that post in July we hadn’t really done anything beyond saying ‘we really must do that’ to each other. Well, not we’ve set things in motion: we bought a digital camcorder and it should be arriving any day now, and we bough the domain geekhappyfuntime.com [nothing there yet tho] and we spend most of Saturday morning talking about stuff, and watching other vidcasts. We’re still not exactly sure how we’re going to set everything up in the lounge, or exactly what we’re going to talk about, but we’ve made the first steps! I feel rather positive about what happening with it all.

[I was sure I’d already done this, but what the hell]

So since I got tagged by both Andy AND Bytye, I’m going to do fourteen things, and try and tag fourteen people. But first, the rules:
* Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
* Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
* Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
* Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

1. I got kicked out of Guides for being too old. I was offered a chance at senior section but turned it down because I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend my time around younger kids any more. I’ve been recently offered the chance to be an adult helper again though.

2. I use to make lace when I was younger. I still have my cushion and bobbins at my parent’s house, and I bet I could still do it. I’ve made two bookmarks, three Christmas tree ornaments and two pictures [that I can recall].

3. Up until a couple of years ago I use to have dreams that most people apparently would call ‘nightmares’ almost every night.

4. It takes me several hours to go to sleep.

5. I once took a home correspondence course in creative writing. I pretty much aced it.

6. I’m borderline anemic, which means I bruise easily and I’m only allowed to give blood once a year.

7. I hate having ‘bits’ in my tea. When I lived at with my parent’s I would always blow the dust out of cups, and at home I descale the kettle as soon as I think it’s getting scaly. I don’t have time to descale the kettle at work, but I always make sure I empty the kettle completely every morning to get rid of the bits.

8. I do the washing up in the exact same order every time: glassware, cutlery, plates, bowls, then anything else [like pots and pans].

9. I still have three boxes of books at my parent’s because Andy says we don’t have room for them here.

10. I’ve ‘won’ National Novel Writing Month 3 times, but only one of those [Tusamov] is a complete novel, the other two [The MOW Files and The Stone Of Tides] are only half way complete.

11. I have never owned a personal, portable audio device for more than a month [not counting my new mobile phone]

12. when I’m counting I have this habit of missing out the number eleven.

13. I hate seeing numbers written in digits in professional work. I think all numbers should be written out longhand.

14. Harvest, nearly always the first week in September, is my favorite time of year.

And now for the tags. And now I have a small problem - Andy has tagged nearly everyone I know that posts with any real regularity. Damn him *waves fist* Fern is the only person left for me to tag, so consider yourself taggificated.

On Friday the 28th of November I passed the 50k mark, making me:

Andy was supposed to be finishing off the story [I left it at a bit of a cliff-hanger] over the weekend but didn’t get much further than he had been. Ah well. Come March [or National Novel Editing Month, as we like to call it] he’s got the task of finishing it off and sorting it out, while I work on editing the MOW files.

As we approach Christmas and the new year, I’ve been reminiscing on the things I’ve been up to over the year, and naturally that includes some of the purchases I’ve made. Without a doubt the prize for the best purchase I’ve made this year goes to: Lifeventure Dry Wash Gel.

Basically it’s a coloured antibacterial hand wash – akin to the stuff you find in hospitals - that smells faintly of mint. It comes in a handy rigid tube of 50ml and the applicator/ lid while easy to open with one hand, never seems to come open in my bag.

This stuff is so useful! I bought it before I went to the Cropready musical festival this year, and it saw a lot of use by more than just Dark and I. I’ve taken it out on hikes, and when I’m out shopping. It’s been passed around and everyone I’ve spoken to has said it’s a good idea, and I would imagine it’d be indispensable with a small family.

The only downside is the slightly sticky feeling you get after an application, but that soon goes off

I gave it for value, usefulness and conversation starter!

So I didn’t have much to do yesterday, so I made bookmarks!

I’ve been experimenting with printing directly on to card. It sort of works, but usually needs to be sprayed with hairspray to make the ink stay on the card. I may have to investigate actual printer card, the stuff I’m using atm was left over from when we were making stencils to put the elvish on our lounge walls, so it’s naff quality but thin enough to pass through the printer.

I’ve been really quiet on the nano front, mostly been recording my anguish and triumphs on Jaiku, but I just had to let y’all know: I’m on the home stretch now! I hit 40k tonight, now only another 10k words till I reach the target. How amazingly awesome is that? *does the happy dance*

I know it’s only been a couple of days, and I have the rest of the month to go, but so far our story is shaping up nicely, and so far I’ve managed to get a nice healthy word count. I hope I’ll have a good buffer by the end of tonight

8450 done, only another 41550 to go